The following disclosure relates to processing circuits and systems.
Conventional operating systems typically support multitasking, which is a scheduling scheme that permits more than one processor thread to share common processing resources. A processor thread represents an architectural state within a processor that tracks execution of a software program. In the case of a computer having a single processor, only one processor thread is processed at any given point in time, meaning that the processor is actively executing instructions associated with a single processor thread. The act of re-assigning a processor from one processor thread to another is called a context switch.
In a conventional pipeline processor, a context switch typically occurs through a hardware interrupt and interrupt service routine. Interrupt service routines typically have an associated execution time, or interrupt overhead, that may consume valuable processor time. Additionally, in a conventional pipeline processor, a context switch typically occurs only at fixed intervals (e.g., every 100 μs), as determined by, e.g., vendors of an operating system.